


once upon a time

by explodinganyway



Category: Community
Genre: Angst, Britta POV, F/F, cat death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodinganyway/pseuds/explodinganyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the aftermath of Suzie B's death, and why it isn't the right aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	once upon a time

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my beautiful and shining person, also for Danger. May be slightly out of character because I had the idea and needed people to fill it, not the other way around.

I was on my couch for two days before you came to rescue me. 

You stood half behind me and rested a hand on my hair which was greasy from my carelessness. You ran your fingers through it anyway before brushing a thumb underneath my eyes. I still had stale mascara pooled there like a tattoo of my sorrow. You pulled me up and towards the bathroom, took my clothes off piece by piece, placed me in my own shower, boiled the kettle once I was in, and saved my life. 

The kettle whistled and then stopped, and then you stepped into the shower and held me. You got wet, half from the drops and half from tears I couldn’t admit to crying. 

Once upon a time two people met, and then fought, and then were happy. This isn’t a story like that, no. This is story about need and how you half carried me into my own room. I am the same size as you, yet I’ve heard stories about mothers lifting cars off their children, and I guess this was the same. 

You sit me down on the bed and your skin never leaves mine. It’s hot, the only thing I can really feel, the tugs of my hair as you comb it over and over disappearing into the space I am staring blankly at. I think I cry, because I feel something tear through my chest like a blade I swore never to use again, and then a sob breaks through the quiet of the room. Your hands part, pull the comb through slowly, then push to one side—over and over. The continual feeling of it, soft like it might break at any moment, brings me back piece by piece. Your hands on me are a song, your thighs either side of my hips the careful beat and your shaking breath the melody. I breathe and listen to you, and want and wait. You stop, eventually, once my hair is less dark and wild, and I turn my head slightly towards you—a question in amongst my dark mind.

You kiss my forehead.

It’s an answer.

You kiss my cheek.

A question.

I answer with my lips against yours, chapped and heartbroken and unable to pull much out of you. You understand though, understand me, and you pull me up by my limp hands and lead me to my kitchen. I’m in my own house, with everything the way it should be, but if you wanted to lead me around I know I would follow you forever. 

Don’t let go.

I know I will be lost; sucked up like a black hole not yet supposed to be there, galaxies gone before their time. If there is such a thing.

Their time. Doesn’t their death mean the end of their time? If so, why can I not accept that? You sit me on my own kitchen counter, the marble cold under my legs, and make me a cup of tea.

Once upon a time I thought I was invincible.  
Once upon a time I definitely thought that I would save the world.  
Once upon a time I smoked a lot of weed.

Maybe they are related, but I think it threads earlier than that. 

The story starts on my eleventh birthday, when a man far too comfortable in our home became far too comfortable in me. Or maybe it starts before that, in 1987 when I wouldn’t write a Christmas List and was yelled at for hours. Even then, at seven, I didn’t want anything to do with a system I was born into, a system that would push me over when I turned eleven.  
Maybe the story starts earlier still, with my birth, with his birth, or when my mother met my father and forgot her values. Maybe there is no start and no ending and only here, with your hands rubbing up and down my thighs and a mug next to my hip, steaming.

I take a sip as you watch me, watch my lips, and when I am done I kiss you again, because you are still nervous and I am still half a person left open in the breeze. You are in my clothes, yours wet from the time you stopped me from drowning in myself, and I am only in underwear—soft and pale and innocent like I have never been.

I wonder what falling feels like, and then I wonder if there is even such a thing, for if there was nothing to catch us it would just be flying and no one would know that I am such a screw up. You look at me and your eyes aren’t blue but green and grey and gold and white and I am flying or falling or both, falling caught by the wind and carried off.

Once upon a time you yelled at me and I yelled at you and then our trains moved on to parallel tracks. I kiss you again and hear a whistle blow in my head. It is the kettle, another tea for you because you didn’t check the water level before, and your hands leave my legs.

I want you back because you’re another half person and when you walk away I am left open in the breeze again, and I have felt this way for too long. Come back, I whisper and you don’t hear me, come back, I whisper and my feet are flying and landing on the tiles and then my hands are swimming and around you and please don’t leave me alone again.

You brush my hair back, already curly in the almost heat of my apartment and kiss me because you can. We are growing, and, already, we are a ‘we’. A togetherness given by words that you and I never could. You see, now it is us; us in this house, us drinking tea, us wiping the tears from our faces as we never realise we are crying. 

Once upon a time your future looked very different to this, to me. I wonder now if that scares you, if you want to go back to the safety and normalcy of them; them the collective, them outside of me, and now, outside of us.

Our kiss deepens because I can feel again and your hands are slipping through my hair, down my neck, your palm pressing against a frantic pulse I had forgotten. My hands grip the counter, white knuckled, because you are an endless galaxy and I know that letting go means never finding my way home. It is not that I don’t want to let go or that I fear it, I just want to hold onto that almost for as long as possible. Someone once said that the lead up to a kiss is better than the kiss itself; therefore, this waiting, kissing yet holding on before I fall or fly, must be heaven. Your hand moves to my cheek and I watch you.

I never want to stop watching you and I don’t understand because you are mostly water, and I don’t want to stare at water the way I want to stare at you. 

Britta, you whisper and it’s broken and scared and I’m not ready to face its meaning. What happened? I want to tell you because it’s so easy and simple and straightforward but because it is, it also isn’t. Because it is so easy this isn’t the right aftermath, because it is so small it must be so big. Abed always talks in riddles and half sentences and always asks me ‘why are you so much bigger on the inside?’ and I feel like what happened is his question. On the outside, Suzie B died but on the inside a knife is shredding me into pieces I can no longer grab.

I look at you and then look down because nothing makes sense.

Once upon a time things were easy, and then I woke up, which is a lie because my dreams have never been easy. Maybe in another world my life is simple and you are always with me and you never let bad things happen to an eleven year old me. 

My cat died, I tell you like a prayer. You don’t understand but you nod and I understand that it is the beginning of understanding, the way scattering seeds is the beginning of flowers, the way a glass of water is the start of an ocean. I say my cat died but hidden in those words like one of those 3D pictures are the words I love you and even though you can’t hear them just yet, I know you will.

Do you want to talk about it? you ask and I try to think back to the beginning because once upon a time someone fell in love and decided to pick a flower and it must have started there. Once upon a time someone decided that every coast needed a lighthouse and I don’t know which came first; the love or the lover.

Instead I say, on my eleventh birthday my mother bought me a kitten, and you understand a little bit better, my coffee going cold next to us. Aren’t we tragic in this light?  
I tell you more because once those doors have opened it is too much effort to jam them back up and you start to understand me a little more. My coffee turns even colder and then reverses and warms up, continues until it hits equilibrium and I start to wonder why tile is so much colder than carpet. Would you know if I asked you?

Suzie B, named so because in my sixth grade class there was a Suzie F and they were not the same. Suzie B, just a cat by so many peoples’ standards but more, because the kitten was a salvation on a day when I believed in nothing, when my father chose a strangers word over mine. Suzie B because sometimes cats aren’t just the annoying things in the corner but are living creatures who let you cry against their fur when your virginity is taken in a mess of cheap beer and weed, none of which you should have consumed. Suzie B because cats can be the one person on your side when families are not and Suzie B because some cats are better making you feel safe than any human.

I tell you this through a half tear stained face and you pour me a glass of wine, because it is one of those stories. 

The wine is old because I forgot to cork it, and the tea feels rough against its texture but I welcome the strange taste. I kiss you again, because you know, because you are here, because you saved me and because you kiss me back.

Once upon a time two soul mates walked past each other and maybe that is here and now but I have you, and that seems like a fair enough trade.

I finish my wine and you lead me to bed, even though it is day. I think it is day anyway for everything is bright, no, everything is smoky, wait, everything is red and you are close to me. You lay me on my own bed and pull up my covers that are too soft in this strange night. I hold fast to your hand but you promise me that you are not going anywhere—I loosen my grip but only for a second. 

You slip in beside me and my blankets feel like silk scarves wrapping around and around us. I sink into them, into you, my lighthouse lover, and know that come morning, if I’ve forgotten how to swim, you will save me.


End file.
